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    Speak to Us of Love: Reflections on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    Speak to Us of Love: Reflections on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    Speak to Us of Love: Reflections on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    Ebook223 pages3 hours

    Speak to Us of Love: Reflections on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

    By Osho

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    About this ebook

    Introducing us to the most famous poems of the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, Osho takes the reader into a mystical world, addressing essential issues in everybody’s life. The famous verse that gives the title to this book is about love”but not the ordinary love we know from novels and movies.
    Speak to us of Love gives a taste of a contemporary mystic at work, trying to disrupt our dreams, illusions, and the state of unconsciousness that prevents us from enjoying life to the fullest.
    This is about and for the millions of people in the world who have killed their love with their own hands, and who are now miserable. They never wanted to kill it, there was no intention to kill their love, but in their unconsciousness they started possessing. Husbands possess their wives, wives possess their husbands, and parents possess their children. Teachers are trying in every possible way to possess their students. Politicians are trying to possess countries. Religions are trying to possess millions of people and control every aspect their lives.

    This book shows that life can only thrive in freedom. Love never allows anyone to possess it, because love is our very soul.

    For Osho, the basis of all our neuroses or psychoses is simple: our souls are not nourished. Love, the basic nourishment, is missing. Osho comprehensively trounces the so-called religious and philosophical approaches to life. All that is of worth is to be found, not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary; not in fantastical ideas of the other world” beyond death, but in this very world that we find ourselves in here and now. In short, this book shows that making a simple yet utterly basic shift in our lives will awaken the silence in our beings and bring joy into our every moment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOsho Media International
    Release dateMay 14, 2013
    ISBN9780880500685
    Speak to Us of Love: Reflections on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    Author

    Osho

    Osho is one of the most provocative and inspiring spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, the influence of his teachings continues to grow, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world. He is the author of many books, including Love, Freedom, Aloneness; The Book of Secrets; and Innocence, Knowledge, and Wonder.

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      Book preview

      Speak to Us of Love - Osho

      Speak to Us of Love

      OSHO

      Copyright © 1986, 2013 OSHO International Foundation

      www.osho.com/copyrights

      Images and cover design © OSHO International Foundation

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

      OSHO is a registered trademark of OSHO International Foundation

      www.osho.com/trademarks

      Speak to Us of Love is also available as a print edition ISBN-13:978-0-918963-98-7

      This title is a selection of chapters from a series titled Reflections on Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. This series is also available as a print edition ISBN-13: 978-81-7261-220-7

      This book is a series of original talks by Osho, given to a live audience. All of Osho’s talks have been published in full as books, and are also available as original audio recordings. Audio recordings and the complete text archive can be found via the online OSHO Library at

      www.osho.com/library

      On Children, On Love, On Marriage, On Giving, On Freedom,

      On Friendship, On Work, On Pleasure from THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran, copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran and renewed 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

      OSHO MEDIA INTERNATIONAL, Ireland

      Library of Congress Catalog-In-Publication Data is available

      ISBN-13: 978-0-88050-068-5

      Preface

      Kahlil Gibran is pure music, a mystery, such that only poetry can sometimes grasp, but only sometimes.

      Centuries have passed; there have been great men, but Kahlil Gibran is a category in himself. I cannot conceive that even in the future there is a possibility of another man of such deep insight into the human heart, into the unknown that surrounds us.

      He has done something impossible. He has been able to bring at least a few fragments of the unknown into human language. He has raised human language and human consciousness as no other man has ever done. Through Kahlil Gibran, it seems all the mystics, all the poets, all creative souls have joined hands and shared themselves.

      Although he has been immensely successful in reaching people, still he feels it is not the whole truth, but just a glimpse. But to see the glimpse of truth is a beginning of a pilgrimage that leads you to the ultimate, to the absolute, to the universal.

      There are a few things I would like to say to you before I make my commentaries on the statements of Kahlil Gibran.

      First, he is certainly a great poet, perhaps the greatest that has ever been born on the earth, but he is not a mystic; and there is a tremendous difference between a poet and a mystic. The poet, once in a while, suddenly finds himself in the same space as the mystic. In those rare moments, roses shower over him. On those rare occasions, he is almost a Gautam Buddha – but remember, I’m saying almost.

      These rare moments come and go. He’s not the master of those rare moments. They come like the breeze and the fragrance and by the time you have become aware they are gone.

      A poet’s genius is that he catches those moments in words. Those moments come into your life too. They are free gifts of existence – or in other words, glimpses to provoke in you a search, a desire to come to a moment when this space will become your very life, your blood, your bones, your marrow. You will breathe it; your heart will beat it. You will never be able to lose it, even if you want to.

      The poet is for moments a mystic, and the mystic is a poet forever.

      But this has always created a very difficult question, and nobody has been able to solve it. The problem has been posed again and again, thousands of times all over the world: if the poet gets only glimpses yet creates so much beauty, so much poetry – words start becoming alive the moment he touches them – why have the mystics not been able to produce the same kind of poetry? They are twenty-four hours a day, day and night, in that creative state, but their words don’t carry that beauty. Even the words of Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ fall very much short of the words of people like Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, Rabindranath Tagore. It certainly seems to be strange, because the people who have only moments create so much and the people who have the universal consciousness available to them, waking or sleeping… What happens? Why have they not been able to produce Kahlil Gibrans? And nobody has answered it.

      My own experience is that if a beggar finds a gold mine, he will sing and he will dance and he will go mad with joy – but not an emperor.

      A poet once in a while becomes an emperor – but only once in a while; that’s why he cannot take it for granted. But the mystic is not just for a moment merged with the universal consciousness – he is merged. There is no way of coming back.

      Those small glimpses may be translated into words because they are only dewdrops. But the mystic has become the ocean; hence, silence becomes his song. All words seem so impotent, nothing seems to be capable of bringing his experience into any kind of communication. And the ocean is so vast and he is continuously one with it; naturally, he himself forgets that he is separate.

      To create, you have to be there to create. To sing a song, you have to be there. But the mystic has become the song. His presence is his poetry. You cannot print it, you cannot paint it, you can only drink it.

      To communicate with a poet is one thing, but to be in communion with a mystic is totally different. But it is good to begin with poets, because if you are not able even to absorb dewdrops, the ocean is not for you. Or, better to say, you are not for the ocean. To you, even the dewdrop will appear like a vast ocean.

      Kahlil Gibran has written almost thirty books. The Prophet, which we are going to discuss, is his first book; the remaining are rubbish. This is a strange phenomenon – what happened to the man? When he wrote this he was just young, twenty-one years of age. One would have thought that now more and more would be coming. And he tried hard; he was writing his whole life, but nothing came even close to the beauty and the truth of The Prophet. Perhaps the window never opened again.

      A poet is accidentally mystic. It is just by accident: a breeze comes, you cannot produce it. And because he became world famous – this is one book which must have been translated in almost all the languages of the world – he tried hard to do something better, and that’s where he failed. It is unfortunate that he never came across a man who could have told him a simple truth: "You had not tried when you created The Prophet, it happened. And now you are trying to do it.

      It has happened; it is not your doing. You may have been a vehicle. Something that was not yours… – just like a child is born of a mother.

      The mother cannot create the child, she is simply a passage. The Prophet belongs to the category of a very small number of books which are not dependent on your action, your intelligence, on you; on the contrary, they are possible only when you are not, when you allow them to happen, when you don’t stand in the way. You are so relaxed that you don’t interfere.

      This is one of those rarest of books. In it, you will not find Kahlil Gibran – that’s the beauty of the book. He allowed the universe to flow through him; he is simply a medium, a passage, just a hollow bamboo which does not hinder the flute player.

      In my experience, books like The Prophet are holier than your so-called holy books. And because these books are authentically holy, they have not created a religion around themselves. They don’t give you any ritual, they don’t give you any discipline, they don’t give you any commandments. They simply allow you to have a glimpse of the same experience which happened to them.

      The whole experience cannot come into words, but something – perhaps not the whole rose, but a few petals… They are enough proof that a rose exists. Your window has just to be open, so a breeze sometimes can bring petals.

      Those petals coming through a breeze into your being are really invitations of the unknown. Existence is calling you for a long pilgrimage. Unless that pilgrimage is made you will remain meaningless, dragging somehow, but not really living. You will not have laughter in your heart.

      Kahlil Gibran avoids his own name by creating a fictitious name, Almustafa. That’s the beginning of The Prophet. Almustafa is the prophet.

      Great truths can only be said in parables.

      Osho

      Reflections on Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

      Chapter 01 – Love: Speak to Us of Love

      Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.

      And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:

      When love beckons to you, follow him,

      Though his ways are hard and steep.

      And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

      Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

      And when he speaks to you believe in him,

      Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

      For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

      Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

      So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

      Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

      He threshes you to make you naked.

      He sifts you to free you from your husks.

      He grinds you to whiteness.

      He kneads you until you are pliant;

      And then he assigns you to the sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

      All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

      But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,

      Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,

      Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

      The people who have realized the meaning of life have only spoken to those who can understand love, because love is the meaning of life. Very few people have realized that love is your very flame. It is not food that keeps you alive, it is love – which keeps you not only alive, but gives you a life of beauty, truth, silence, and millions of other priceless things.

      The world can be divided in two parts: the world where everything has a price and the world where price is meaningless. Where prices are no longer relevant, values arise. Prices are for things, for dead things.

      Life does not recognize that which is dead. But man goes on missing such a simple truth. He even tries to purchase love; otherwise there would not have been prostitutes. And it is not only a question of prostitutes. What are your marriages? – a permanent institution of prostitution.

      Remember, unless you enter into the world of values where no money, no power, no respectability is of any help, you cannot enter into authentic life. And the flavor of that life is love.

      Because man is so much accustomed to purchasing everything, he forgets that the very effort to purchase something that cannot be purchased is a murder. A husband demands love from his wife because he has purchased her, and the same is true about the wife. But they are unaware that they are assassinating each other. They do not know the moment price enters into love, love dies.

      Love is very delicate, very sacred. In all of our relationships we are trying to reduce the other person to a thing. A wife is a thing. If you have any intelligence, let her remain just a woman. A husband is no longer alive. Allow him to remain in freedom because only in freedom can love flower.

      But man, in his utter stupidity, has destroyed everything that is valuable. You even try to purchase God. How deep is your blindness? People who can afford it – remember the word afford – have temples in their houses. Statues can be purchased, but whatever you do with those statues is sheer nonsense; a purchased statue can never become a living god. And not only do they purchase the statue, they also purchase a priest to do the worship.

      I have seen priests running from one house to another house because they have to worship in at least ten or twelve temples; only then can they feed themselves. And the people who are purchasing even prayer, worship, think they are doing great virtuous acts. These are the sinners!

      Your life will not have any flowers if it does not have something which is priceless. Do you have something in your life which is priceless?

      People are selling even their lives. What are your soldiers? – and their number must be millions all around the earth. They have sold themselves. Their only function is to kill and be killed. But as far as I can see that is not important; they have killed themselves the day they sold themselves. They may be still breathing, but just to breathe is not life. Trees breathe, vegetables breathe. Cabbages and cauliflowers breathe, but they are not alive and they know nothing of love. They have prices attached to them. Perhaps cabbages are cheaper, cauliflowers a little costly – because cauliflowers are nothing but cabbages with university degrees. But don’t do this to any human being.

      And if you cannot purchase a thing, you cannot possess it either. In your deep sleep you even possess your children, without ever becoming aware that the very possession – "This is my child" – is a murder. Children come through you, but they belong to the universe. You are just a passage. But you make every effort that your child should have your family name, your religion, your political ideology. He should be just an obedient object.

      When I was a student in the university the government of India passed a resolution, that unless you participated in training for the army, your postgraduate degree could not be given to you. It was compulsory. I approached the vice-chancellor and I said, I would love to remain without any postgraduate degree. I am not willing to participate in a training which is nothing but a very psychological process of destroying your consciousness, your life, and reducing you to just a number.

      In the army, when somebody dies, on the notice board it is declared, Number sixteen has fallen. When you read that Number sixteen has fallen, nothing happens to your heart because number sixteen has no wife, no children, no old mother, no old father to be taken care of. Numbers don’t produce children. This is a strategy. But if you see a name, you will suddenly feel sad. What will happen to the children, to the wife, to the old mother, to the old father who was just living to see his son coming back home? But he does not know that his son no longer exists. He has become number sixteen. Number sixteen can be replaced and will be replaced. Somebody else will become number sixteen.

      You cannot replace a living human being – but a dead number? But it is not only the soldiers: if you look at yourself, in many ways you have allowed the crowd around you to make you a number. Even the people who say that they love you simply want to possess you, to exploit you. You are an object of their longings, of their desires.

      Love is not available in the marketplace. For love, you will have to understand that existence is not a dead existence. It is full of light, overflowing with love, but to experience that love you have to be attuned with the world of values.

      Almustafa did not answer some people. Perhaps they were not worth answering. They have lost their souls: somebody has become a governor, somebody has become a president. Presidents and governors and prime ministers don’t have any souls; otherwise it would be impossible for a man like Joseph Stalin to kill one million Russians. And these were not capitalists – Russia has never been rich – these were poor people, but they did not want to be possessed by anyone and they were rebelling against slavery. First the czars were killing them for centuries, but Stalin outdid all the czars.

      But sometimes I think perhaps he killed only dead people. Adolf Hitler killed six million human beings – but perhaps it is not right to condemn him, because these six million people had lost their souls long before. Somebody had become a husband, somebody had become a wife, somebody had become a father, somebody had become a mother…

      In the world of nature, a woman is just a woman – not a lady. A lady is a woman who is living a posthumous life. In nature, there are authentic men – raw, rooted in the earth – but you will not find your gentlemen. They are the hypocrites who have died long ago and are now just breathing, eating, dragging themselves from the cradle to the grave. If they were really alive, they would have known the secret that exists between birth and death.

      Almustafa simply refused to answer those people – who may have been knowledgeable, who may have been rich, but their questions were phony. Their questions were American.

      I must remind you: the word phony comes from America. It

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